I Want Attention. There, I Said It. Are You Happy?

Christina Angelique Govaerts

13 hours ago

5 min read

Every time my thumb hovers over the “post” button, I hesitate. Then comes the familiar, grating internal interrogation. Who do you think you are? And yet, eventually, I pluck up the courage to hit post anyway.

Lately, this has been happening to me over and over again. Whether it's on Instagram, TikTok or, more recently, Substack, I can't help but feel a little embarrassed to put myself out there. At the start of 2026, I decided I was going to be more proactive about chasing my dreams of becoming a writer, and apparently that means periodically appearing on the internet and reminding everyone that I would quite like them to take 10 minutes out of their day to read my stuff.

Which is, when you think about it, a completely reasonable thing for an aspiring writer to do. So why does it make me want to crawl out of my own skin?

There is something strangely vulnerable about posting online. Especially when you start posting to get noticed for your work, be it your writing, painting, singing, DJing or whatever. The embarrassment creeping in isn't necessarily because what you're posting is cringe-worthy, but because posting exposes something we're not supposed to admit: we want to be seen.

We live in a digital culture where, at the heart of all social media, visibility has become the new currency. We are encouraged to build personal brands, grow audiences, share our work, document our lives and confess our latest ‘life hacks’, to the point where a certain level of self-promotion feels compulsory. If you want to be a writer, like me, you should probably have a Substack or post on some sort of platform.

If you make music, you need to promote it on TikTok. If you make ceramics at the weekend, someone will eventually tell you to start an Instagram account for them. More and more, the boundaries between building an identity and publicly performing that identity become blurred.

You don't just write. You write to post, another reason why I'm constantly debating whether or not to delete the app altogether. The problem here is that self-promotion violates another unspoken social rule: wanting attention is cringe-worthy!

Whether or not we admit it, a small part of us will admire people who have audiences, while quietly judging those who appear too eager to acquire one. Having thousands of people interested in what you have to share is impressive, but posting to your humble following can feel mortifying.

Posting is saying “this is who I am” before you're even there.

This is what I've realised bothers me most about sharing my writing. It isn't simply that someone might not like what I have to say; it's that every time I publish a new article, I am making a small claim about myself.

I am a writer. And immediately, another part of my brain responds: Are you, though?

Because when you're still becoming someone, you have to temporarily inhabit an identity that you have not fully grown into yet. So the claim can feel undeserved or even arrogant. And the imposter syndrome can be brutal.

We already perform different identities in our daily lives. You are probably a different version of yourself when you're with your friends, your family or your colleagues, and each of these versions is an identity that you have carefully constructed. When you post, these different identities can start to feel threatened. Your brain can scream at you that there is a mismatch! Posting, in this sense, isn't embarrassing because people might judge your photos; it's embarrassing because we are all, deep down, afraid of being perceived, and even more so of being perceived incorrectly.

Then the likes start rolling in. And this is where things get complicated. After all that fear and anxiety, someone likes your post. Someone comments. Someone subscribes. Maybe a stranger sends you a message saying that what you wrote resonated with them.

Suddenly, the thing that made you feel horribly exposed moments ago feels… good. The identity you've tentatively placed in front of everyone has been acknowledged and accepted. And that can feel incredibly intoxicating. Numbers provide an extraordinarily simple answer to an extraordinarily complicated question: Was it OK for me to ask to be seen?

Any follower interaction turns something as abstract as attention into something measurable. The internet has effectively given us the most sophisticated scoreboard for being perceived. It doesn't just tell us who likes our content, but when they decided to like our post, which slide did it, how many people shared it, who rewatched our story and how many times.

And we keep checking it.

Everyone is both performer and audience member.

Psychologists call this the spotlight effect, which describes our tendency to overestimate how much other people notice what we do. The funny reality is that most people are probably scrolling while waiting for the bus. This knowledge can be both devastating and liberating.

The thing you spent 20 minutes debating whether or not to share might occupy someone else's attention for approximately 1.5 seconds. Everyone thinks the spotlight is on them, while everyone else is too busy standing under their own spotlight to notice.

My diagnosis: Climb cringe mountain.

I keep thinking that becoming anything in this digital age requires a period in which you risk looking slightly ridiculous. You cannot become a writer without first writing things that aren't as good as you want them to be. You cannot build an audience without spending some time talking to one that barely exists. You cannot become confident without first doing things while painfully aware that you aren't confident yet.

As my mother always says, ‘fake it till you make it’.

Maybe the goal isn't to stop wanting attention entirely. Sometimes you want community, connection or simply the knowledge that whatever you threw out into the vast expanse of the internet reached another human being and made an impact.

The more interesting question might be why we have become so embarrassed to admit that.

I still hesitate before I post. I still imagine everyone I've ever met watching, judging, laughing. I still occasionally publish something and immediately want to hurl my phone across the room. But I'm beginning to think that is kind of the point. Sharing online means briefly risking being perceived as the person you hope one day to become. Perhaps the only way to close that gap is to tolerate being seen trying.

So yes, I want to be a writer. Unfortunately, that means I'm going to have to post about it. So I shall dust off my boots and swallow my pride to prepare for climbing cringe mountain. See you guys at the top ;)